Gage and Sadie

Epilogue: Gage

Years later...

As it turned out, the third time was a charm in more ways than one for us. It wasn't a case of oh, I've got her now for good, I can relax. It was a case of now I need to make sure every single day that Sadie knows just how much I love her, that she's my whole world. The day Sadie agreed to give me a third chance was the beginning of a lifetime of making sure she'd never have one moment of regret. I would have given the last drop of my blood to make sure this precious woman always knew she was first in my life. Not the company, not the CEO title, not the money, but Sadie. Very simply, she was the reason I lived.

She was the reason I loved.

I hadn't been kidding all those nights I whispered I can't live my life without you to her when I thought she was asleep. It was something I still whispered to her every night once she was out cold. Sadie always drifted off in my arms because she'd told me one night when we were talking about our childhoods that the loneliest part of foster care was falling asleep without anyone to tuck her in, kiss her good night and let her know she was safe. So every single night, I pulled her into my arms and kissed her good night.

"I love you, sweetheart," I'd say softly into her silky hair. "Go to sleep now. I've got you."

She'd wiggle just a little bit closer, I'd tighten my arms just a little bit more and she'd say sleepily, "I love you, too." Then she'd sigh happily.

And when my wife fell asleep not long after and her breathing evened out, I'd whisper one last thing to her: I can't live my life without you.

And I couldn't. It was nothing but the truth. There was no way I could live my life without Sadie and the three babies she gave to me. My family. The only family either of us really had so we poured everything into them. Galen had moved far away and had never attempted to contact us. I kept track of him just so he could never surprise us again, and I knew he worked at various companies over the years at pretty low-level positions. He never married and as long as he stayed away, I didn't want to know anything more about him.

Gibson was our first born. Honestly, Sadie was lucky he wasn't our last. He was a big boy, just over nine pounds, and it wasn't an easy birth, taking almost twenty-four hours. I felt like I was dying with every contraction I had to watch Sadie endure because she wanted a motherfucking natural birth. As each hour dragged on, I begged her to get an epidural, to take something to relieve her pain, to remember her breathing at the very least. I was ready to call a urologist in to give me a fucking vasectomy right alongside my wife as she labored just to ensure she never had to go through this again. How the hell did men tolerate watching their wives in pain, especially this kind of hellish pain?

Sadie stubbornly refused the drugs and an epidural, which led to me accidentally grabbing the doctor by the front of his scrubs and demanding he do something, immediately, to help her pain and get the baby born. When he suggested maybe removing me from the room might help her suffering, I would have put him through the wall had Sadie not called my name sharply, pulling me back from an assault charge. Fucking doctor should stick to medicine and leave the comedy routines to the professionals. I glared at him through the rest of my wife's labor and delivery and he just smirked at me. Asshole, letting my wife suffer like that.

But his voice calling out Congratulations, it's a boy! appeased me somewhat and made me forget anything but Sadie crying softly as our tiny boy was put on her bare chest. Whatever they did to Sadie following his birth I don't know because I couldn't take my eyes off my wife who couldn't take her eyes off our son.

When they took him from her to clean up, her tired eyes twinkled at me. I knew that look, so I should have been prepared for whatever came out of her mouth. It was the same look she'd had in her eye when she'd run up an eight thousand dollar bill in that restaurant by ordering one of everything on the dinner menu.